Preview: Bury v Birmingham City

Richie Barker’s squad face their toughest test of pre-season this evening when Lee Cark brings his Birmingham City side to Gigg Lane.

The Shakers pre-season campaign rolled onto three games at the weekend with a good 2-0 win over Morecambe at the Globe Arena on Saturday, and with two games this week – the gaffer will be looking to step up match fitness by offering more minutes to the players.

We may even start to see his preferred starting eleven the gaffer looks forward to the Capital One Clash with Middlesbrough – which is now less than two weeks away.

Marcus Marshall may be back in contention after sitting out the weekend’s game at Morecambe with a tight groin, whilst Efe Sodje will be back on the field at some point after being knocked out by a flying elbow at the weekend.

Blue’s manager Lee Clark, assisted by former Shaker Terry McDermott, and has named a 23 man squad for tonight’s game. This hastily arranged game came as a result of Oldham accepting an offer of a game from Manchester City, leaving Birmingham without a game tonight. Richie Barker quickly switched our game with Wigan’s development squad to Thursday and invited Lee Clark to bring his side to Bury – an offer that was quickly accepted.

With less than two weeks to that first game, the manager has switched his attention to the tactical side of the game, more work is being done on shape and the lads have been working hard on breaking teams down.

Strikers are continuing to score goals, Shaun Harrad is now on three goals for pre-season whilst Andy Bishop has a brace to his name – obviously they mean absolutely nothing in terms of the coming League One season – but personally for both players – goals breed confidence, goals breed sharpness and it’s much better for everyone to have two sharp and confident strikers going into a new season.

As usual, we’ll have full match commentary over on Shakers Player with Maurice Dickson and Craig Morley taking us through the game. Our match report will be available on the website soon after the final whistle with post match video reaction going live on Player before midnight tonight.

Hopefully we’ll be in a position to start using Martin Ogden’s match action images soon. A fix to the problem has been identified and a resolution will shortly be deployed to the website.

Admission for this evening game has been set at £10 for adults and £5.00 for all concessions. Bury Supporters have been allocated the Main Stand with visiting Birmingham City fans taking over the Les Hart (South) Stand for the evening.

Also, if you don’t have one, don’t forget to pick up your copy of our pre-season ‘three game in one’ White & Blue Review – the official Programme of Bury Football Club, priced at just £2.00 – available in and around the ground from 6:30 this evening.